


The Nightmare

by deskclutter



Category: Dexter Series - All Media Types, The Sandman
Genre: Body Horror, Eye Horror, Gen, Mutilation, Serial Killers, also i make no guarantees for the accuracy of any of the police procedural stuff, disturbing imagery!!, yo this fic is about dexter morgan and the corinthian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-29
Updated: 2012-10-29
Packaged: 2017-11-17 06:54:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/548806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deskclutter/pseuds/deskclutter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dexter reminisces about a case he didn't follow up on and contemplates being a different strain of monster. (commentfic for streussal.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Nightmare

It's a hobby of mine to borrow old casefiles. Cold cases, unsolved cases. The ones where the last lonely hope for justice has petered out.

Except for me, and I wouldn't call myself a hope. I'm more of a last resort.

When people ask, I tell them that I like to exercise my brain when business is slow. They frown at 'business' sometimes, but not often enough that I think I ought to give the word up. Some people like black humour. It's popular enough today so that I can get away with it.

I tell these curious people that the forensic expert in me is hungry to learn about mistakes. He is hungry to learn how not to make them. This is the part where they usually forgive me for using 'business'. One exception is Sergeant Doakes, but that's nothing I can't deal with.

It's not entirely a lie. Something in me is hungry.

Still, despite my enlightened childhood and the work that Harry trained me for, there are times when even I can't find a culprit, though that's pretty rare.

There was one case about thirty or forty years ago, which wouldn't have caught my eye if not for the souvenirs the killer carried off: the victim's eyeballs. (See -- humour.) I understand souvenirs. They're very dangerous, but they are satisfying. Sometimes, when I have had to pretend for too long, I take out my own boxes of souvenirs and count the slides. They calm me. Some like scraps of cloth or locks of hair. I knew someone who collected bloody fingernails. (I killed her and destroyed them. They were unhygienic.)

But eyes are difficult. They shrink and warp. If you preserve them, jars are heavy to carry around. Dolls and stuffed animals with real eyes are creepy, so I'm told, and very conspicuous. Some killers are like that; not like me. But this killer came into town and left again, and the messier of we monsters don't leave a hunting ground so quickly.

This is another rare thing, but I sometimes run into cases that are bigger than me. When a case goes beyond state borders, for example, Harry's orders have always been to drop it. There's no point in attracting federal attention.

But sometimes, the kills are too clean. Even when you account for the sloppiness of history, there are cases where the evidence should have been there. I don't have the capacity to experience fear of a higher power, but on the rare case like that, where the monster in me can't find even the hint of a trail, I think I would be afraid if I could be.

There was so much blood at the crime scene. But the eyeballs had been so neatly gouged out. It was like the killer had made a gouge that fit perfectly to each eyeball. I was fascinated. Why eyeballs? The eyes are called the windows to the soul. Perhaps this monster had believed in a higher power. Or perhaps he was curious. What must it be like to be un-monstrous? It is a question that I pretend to know. I do trip occasionally though, so I wonder.

But there were other kills like this one. Other eyeballs spirited away from corpses crusted in their own blood. The FBI had it, though the media hadn't, and so, with some regret, I let it slip away. Where would I be if I lost sight of Harry's Code?

I don't fear a higher power, but sometimes I dream and I wonder where those come from. One night after I read that file, I dreamed of a man with white hair and sunglasses. White trousers. White shirt. He was very neat.

But when he took off his shades, he looked at me with my own eyes, and the corners of them crinkled. It looked like the sockets were grinning around my eyeballs, and blood trickled from them like saliva, as though they were slurping on something too big to chew.

Hunger will do that to you, sometimes, but that's why you should never let yourself become too greedy.

I wonder about two things: What does he see? And does he like it? I wonder if I would enjoy being a different sort of monster, like the kind that keeps bloody fingernails.

I told it to Deb in the morning -- just the dream, not the fingernails. She thought it was creepy and told me she didn't want to talk about it any more. I agreed, for appearance's sake. But I still think about it from time to time.

When business is slow.

You know how it is.


End file.
